Kamel Labidi

Kamel Labidi is a freelance journalist and former CPJ representative and consultant for the Middle East and North Africa region. Labidi returned from exile to Tunisia in 2011 to head the National Commission to Reform Information and Communication. He resigned in 2012 to protest the lack of political will of the Islamist-led government to implement the commission’s recommendations.

Moroccan editor Ali Anouzla's arrest
on September 17 in connection with an article published on his website has prompted
an unprecedented wave of regional and international solidarity with a jailed
Arab journalist.

While high-ranking Arab officials are not held accountable for misinforming or misleading the public, critical journalists in their respective countries are increasingly dragged into courts and handed harsh jail sentences following unfair trials for “spreading false news.”

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On Saturday, Tunis airport customs officials confiscated two copies of CPJ’s annual report, Attacks on the Press, as well as five copies of the Arabic-language translation of the Middle East and North Africa section of the book from Tunisian rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou and journalist Lotfi Hidouri on their return from Morocco, the two men told CPJ.

Two weeks ago, Mohamed Abdel
Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program
Coordinator, and I were in Morocco to
hold meetings with government officials as well as journalists. In some ways
the trip was a success, but in other ways it left much to be desired from a
country that claims to be “at the forefront of liberalization in the region,”
to borrow language used by Morocco’s Communication Minister Khalid Naciri in
his meeting with CPJ on February 19.

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Ministers and
officials representing some 20 Western and Arab governments and international
financial institutions declared themselves “friends of Yemen” during last week’s closed-door meeting in
London to address threats posed by Al-Qaeda in Yemen, according
to news reports. Participants,
including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, offered assurances that
the international community, in addition to providing military cooperation, would
work with the Yemeni government to promote human rights and build democratic
institutions. But skeptics fear this publicized “friendship” will also provide an
opportunity for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to intensify his attacks on
political dissent and independent journalism.

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“When people want to live, destiny must surely respond. Darknesss will disappear, chains will certainly break!”

Journalist Taoufik
Ben Brik, 49, spurred admiration among his relatives and lawyers at a Tunis appeals court on Saturday when he chanted these two
verses by Abou El Kacem Chebbi, Tunisia's
most well-known poet. This unexpected recitation of Chebbi's verses, which
galvanized resistance to French occupation and autocratic rule after the
country's independence in 1956, followed the persecuted journalist’s first remarks
in court about his ordeal since his incarceration on
October 29. It was the first time he had been allowed to speak at his own
hearing.

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As Col. Muammar Qaddafi, 67, celebrates the 40th anniversary
of his ascent to power this week, it is unlikely that any of the numerous
international guests will venture to ask the Libyan dictator or his aides what
happened to journalist Abdullah Ali
al-Sanussi al-Darrat after his arbitrary arrest 36 years ago. Al-Darrat, a
journalist and writer from Benghazi,
Libya's
second-largest city, vanished following his detention without
trial in 1973, according to
international human rights groups and the Western Europe-based Libyan League
for Human Rights.

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The
government's cruel treatment of Tunisian journalist Abdallah Zouari came to an
end on August 1, a reminder that even the most autocratic regimes will yield to
international pressure for press freedom. Zouari, a former reporter
for the now-defunct Islamic weekly Al-Fajr, had been forced to
live under a form of house arrest since his release from prison in 2002
following an 11-year term. Living under what was called "administrative control," Zouari was subjected to strict
police surveillance and forced to reside in the suburbs of the southern city of
Zarzis, hundreds
of miles from his family. No more.

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On May 18, Syrian journalist and pro-democracy activist
Michel Kilo was released from prison after serving a three-year sentence for
"weakening national sentiment and encouraging sectarian strife." Kilo, who was
a regular contributor to the leading Lebanese daily, Al-Nahar, and the
London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi among other publications, was
detained in May 2006 after writing articles calling for the
normalization of Lebanese-Syrian relations and an end to a spate of political
assassinations in Lebanon.
CPJ spoke to Kilo, left, after his release from prison.